Aug 6th, 2012

Seasonal Swing

Photos & text by Albert Brian Vick,  Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Community Kitchen Garden Coordinator

The summer harvest season has definitely been in full swing here in the Lewis Ginter Community Kitchen Garden, and we’re still swinging for the fences. The photos below illustrate a natural progression, with our harvest weighted toward squash/zucchini in June and then swinging toward a heavy –- and that’s a literal meaning of the word “heavy” -– weighting toward tomatoes as the summer progresses. We made a secondary planting of squash in early July (yellow crookneck & patty pan) to provide a continuation of the squash harvest (if we can survive the vine borers). The current 2012 total yield from the garden is 5,223 lbs., the result of more than 700 hours of volunteer labor year-to-date.  Just wait ’til you see the next post from the August 4 work session.

The close-knit volunteer team from Capital One’s Benchmark Hospitality International division on July 2, with their morning harvest of yellow & green zucchini – with only a few ripe tomatoes at that point.
Mix of the veggies we delivered to FeedMore

The July 12 delivery – a balance of zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and green beans.
lots of tomatoes!

By this delivery July 26 the proportion of tomatoes has increased substantially.
Patty Pan growing with bloom

The race is on. How many patty pans can we harvest before the vine borers win?
Yellow crookneck squash

Slow motion sculpture. The beautiful beginning of the yellow crooknecks.

Jonah Holland is Digital Content Manager at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, where she has worked for 14 years overseeing social media, the blog, and the website. She is also a mom, yogi, open water swimmer, gardener, and seeker. She's been known to go for a walk in the Garden and come back with hundreds of plant photos, completely inspired to write her next blog post.

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